Gaming coverage from a judgmental dude

The New Xbox Called 'Xbox One'

Finally, after months of speculation, the successor to the Xbox 360 has a name: Xbox One. Don Mattrick made the announcement at the Xbox reveal event today in Redmond, Washington. That’s the new system, pictured above.

The system includes 8GB of RAM, an 8-Core CPU, a 500GBhard drive, a Blu-ray drive, HDMI in and out ports, USB 3.0, 802.11n wireless, and more. The Kinect sensor has also been greatly improved, and will be included with the system.

The name seems kind of odd, considering this is the third Xbox, but I guess they’re meaning it more as an “all-in-one” system. The system is black, looking similar to the first Xbox but with a sleeker design. The controller also looks very similar to the Xbox 360 controller, with just some small tweaks to the buttons and joy sticks. The whole color scheme is black this time around, which I liked a lot.

The big game reveal was Call of Duty Ghosts. It is being run on a brand new engine and they are aiming for it to be revolutionary and the best game in the Call of Duty series yet. What had me most interested about this game is that they are focusing more on the story, going as far as hiring Oscar-winning screenwriter Stephen Gaghan to pen the story. They mentioned that a dog will be a big part of the story, and will be able to do things like sniff out bombs and even protect your team. As long as they can deliver a story that is actually intelligible, I’m on board.

Other than that, there weren’t any other big game announcements. They’re saving all of that good stuff for E3 in a few weeks, but we did get a glimpse of a couple more games. The two games were racing game Forza Motorsport 5and action game Quantum Break. Quantum Break is being developed by Remedy, who created games like Max Payne and Alan Wake. There was a live-action element to the preview, so I wonder if there is anything else to that aspect of the game. Maybe game/live-action cross-over?

They went on and on about the entertainment updates they made to the device, like being able to have your fantasy sports teams on the screen while you watch your favorite sporting event with live updating to your fantasy team. They also showed that Skype chat will be streamlined, and you’ll be able to call friends and gloat that your team is winning. All of this stuff is cool, but I really could do without all of that stuff. Give me the games, dammit!

The other big surprise of the show is that there is going to be a Halo premium television show on Xbox that will involve Steven Spielberg. Although they didn’t mention what his role will be in the series, I imagine it will be somewhere along the lines of executive producer, and maybe he’ll direct the pilot.

It has also been confirmed that Xbox One will not be backwards compatible with Xbox 360 games.

The Xbox One is set to be released later this year. More news will be revealed next month at E3.